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The co-op bookstore for avid readers
The Colossus of New York
Reader Score
78%
78% of readers
recommend this book
Critic Reviews
Great
Based on 6 reviews on
Here is a literary love song that will entrance anyone who has lived in--or spent time--in the greatest of American cities.
A masterful evocation of the city that never sleeps, The Colossus of New York captures the city's inner and outer landscapes in a series of vignettes, meditations, and personal memories. Colson Whitehead conveys with almost uncanny immediacy the feelings and thoughts of longtime residents and of newcomers who dream of making it their home; of those who have conquered its challenges; and of those who struggle against its cruelties.
Whitehead's style is as multilayered and multifarious as New York itself: Switching from third person, to first person, to second person, he weaves individual voices into a jazzy musical composition that perfectly reflects the way we experience the city. There is a funny, knowing riff on what it feels like to arrive in New York for the first time; a lyrical meditation on how the city is transformed by an unexpected rain shower; and a wry look at the ferocious battle that is commuting. The plaintive notes of the lonely and dispossessed resound in one passage, while another captures those magical moments when the city seems to be talking directly to you, inviting you to become one with its rhythms.
The Colossus of New York is a remarkable portrait of life in the big city. Ambitious in scope, gemlike in its details, it is at once an unparalleled tribute to New York and the ideal introduction to one of the most exciting writers working today.
Look for Colson Whitehead's new novel, Crook Manifesto!
Book Details
- Publisher: Vintage
- Publish Date: Oct 12nd, 2004
- Pages: 176
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.04in - 5.22in - 0.46in - 0.43lb
- EAN: 9781400031245
- Categories: • Essays• Essays & Travelogues• United States - Northeast - Middle Atlantic (NJ, NY, PA)
More books to explore
About the Author
More books by Colson Whitehead
What people are saying
"a slim gem that brings New York’s beauty and ugliness to life."
Jonathan Russell Clark is a book critic and author.
For my Jonathan Come Lately column at @RudeTasteful I wrote about Colson Whitehead’s THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK and some of my feelings about my own hometown https://t.co/UZQQW8EUTA
John WM Thompson. Essays, once, but now fiction: Nocturne, Fusion Fragment. Forthcoming in: Aurealis. Proprietor @no_publishing. My views are extremely good
I saw Colson Whitehead read from "The Colossus of New York" at a benefit in 2012 (unfortunately it was for a R*mp*s guy who would go on to get himself blacklisted years later). Absolutely hypnotic https://t.co/0D9JrxjBhY
Critics’ reviews
Praise for this book
"Pitch-perfect. . . . Utterly authentic. . . . The Colossus of New York is quite simply the most delicious 13 bites of the Big Apple I've taken in ages." --The Washington Post
"A love letter to New York. . . . Colossus illuminates innumerable little moments that define the city." --San Francisco Chronicle
"The cheapest, most stylish ticket to the Big Apple between two covers. . . . .It's as if Whitehead's scooped his pen into the collective unconscious of everyone who's ever visited New York." --Pittsburg Post-Gazette
"A revelatory ode to Gotham. . . . Whitehead's engaged eyes and precise prose show us the small details we overlook and the large ones we fail to absorb." --The Miami Herald
"Smooth, dazzling, evocative. . . . [Whitehead] writes wonderfully, commanding a lush, poetic, mellifluous prose instrument." --The Nation
"[Whitehead is] a scientist of metropolitan encounters, he surveys places where the masses collide, knitting together hundreds of observations and calculations that usually remain unspoken. . . . The musical prose thrums with urban momentum." --The Village Voice
"[Whitehead' s] New York, like Walt Whitman's or Thomas Pynchon's or Woody Allen's, is full of incantatory potential. Even the subway, ordinary, noisy, gruddy inevitability, becomes a ferry to the Underworld." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"[A] rhapsodic ode to Gotham." --Time Out
"Jazzlike. . . . A vivid impressionistic montage of Manhattan." --The Seattle Times
"Whitehead's series of vignettes and remembrances paint a perfect visual landscape. . . . A heartfelt tribute to Whitehead's home." --The Oregonian
"Lyrical. . . . Lean and full of longing. . . . The kind of book that will be . . . passed around, dog-eared, library-tagged, resold, from reader to reader. . . . Whitehead takes a known and specific place and universalizes it, insinuating it into the meshwork of our thoughts in a manner impervious to time and trend." --Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Thrums with anxious excitement and excited anxiety accommodating the noirish, the reportorial, and the epigrammatic. . . . The best passages deserve comparison with E.B. White's Here is New York." --Entertainment Weekly
"Whitehead [is] one of the city's and country's finest young writers. . . . [A] guided tour de force." --Chicago Tribune
"Jazzlike. . . . A vivid impressionistic montage of Manhattan." --The Seattle Times
"A revelatory ode to Gotham. . . . Whitehead's engaged eyes and precise prose show us the small details we overlook and the large ones we fail to absorb." --Miami Herald
"Profound and playful." --Los Angeles Times
"Whitehead' s series of vignettes and remembrances paint a perfect visual landscape. . . . A heartfelt tribute to Whitehead's home." --The Oregonian
"Rhapsodic love letters . . . elegant, ambitious essays." --New York Post
"Impressionistic . . . [an] affecting homage to E.B. White." --New York Magazine (Top Fall Book Pick)
What people are saying
"a slim gem that brings New York’s beauty and ugliness to life."